Musical Credibility in Music and Vision 1 giugno

Musical Credibility

GIUSEPPE PENNISI was at the opening night

of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma's production

of Verdi's 'Attila'



Attila has had a rather uncertain and uneven path since its very beginning. The opera had been commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi, then in his early thirties, by Venice's La Fenice. It is based on a play -- Attila, König der Hunnen by the German Zacharias Werner. The play was bad enough; the libretto by Temistocle Solera (with the help of Francesco Maria Piave) is even worse: a rather gauche celebration of Teutonic honesty in a world where all the Romans betray each other, and play fool even with the good and honest King of the Huns.

According to Roger Parker, the final act is 'more than faintly ridiculous in its stage action'. Most likely for this reason, Verdi took much longer to compose Attila than that he needed for the other operas of the same period. Nonetheless, Attila was a success at its premiere on 17 March 1846; then Venice was a solidly Austrian town and real Teutonic drama would most likely be apt for an audience where German was spoken more than Italian. Attila flopped the following year at the Teatro Apollo in Rome. From the 1850s to the 1870s, it was (wrongly) considered to be a patriotic opera even though it depicts a bleak view of Roman-Italian politics and the only positive characters are the 'barbarian' King and, in a short appearance, the Pope. Then, Attila disappeared until the early 1970s when Riccardo Muti revived it at the Florence May Festival in a production with stage direction and sets by Pier Luigi Pizzi. In parallel, in the United States, the bass Justino Diaz fell in love with the opera; thus, it toured in several American opera houses. A recent revival at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York was a disillusion [see Rebecca Schmid's Disillusioning in all its Grandeur in M&V, 13 March 2010]. A production at the Sferisterio Festival [see The Glory of God through three Verdi's operas in M&V, 3 August 2010] left this reviewer with mixed feelings.



Ildar Adbrazakov as Attila and Tatiana Serjan as Odabella in Verdi's 'Attila' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Silvia Lelli. Click on the image for higher resolution

At Rome's Teatro dell'Opera, Attila has been shown only three times -- in 1964, 1981 and 2005; each production had between four and six performances. This year, there will be two sets of performances of a brand new Muti-Pizzi production -- respectively in May-June and in July-August. Most of the interpreters and the chorus (the real protagonist) will be the same, but in the July-August performances Donato Renzetti, not Riccard Muti, will be in the pit.



Ildar Adbrazakov as Attila and Tatiana Serjan as Odabella in Verdi's 'Attila' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Silvia Lelli. Click on the image for higher resolution

In this opera, the baton makes the difference. In the seventies in Washington, I was not enthralled by a Justino Diaz show with Anton Guadagno in the pit. In 2005 I criticized, in the Italian weekly Milano Finanza, the rather boring musical direction of Antonio Pirolli in Rome. In 2010, at the Sferisterio Festival, I found Riccardo Frizza's conducting quite superficial. Indeed, Attila lends itself to sloppy conducting because the plot falls uncomfortably between a drama of individuals (like Ernani or I Due Foscari) and a tragedy of public life (like I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata).



From left to right: Giuseppe Gipali as Foresto, Nicola Alaimo as Ezio, Ildar Adbrazakov as Attila and Tatiana Serjan as Odabella in Verdi's 'Attila' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Silvia Lelli. Click on the image for higher resolution

Muti and Pizzi love the opera and strive to find a good balance between the two levels, to give consistency to two principals, Ezio and Foresto, who appear undefined, and to show the psychological development and the vocal strength of the other two main characters, Odabella and Attila. Also, they intended to renew the May 1972 Florence Festival success. On 25 May 2012, the theatre was sold out and the audience enthusiastic with applause after each and every musical number and there were ovations at the end. The enthusiasm was, perhaps, excessive and more emotional than fully thought through. Nonetheless, Muti's and Pizzi's Attila was a high moment in the recent history of the Teatro dell'Opera. No doubt Muti and Pizzi, as well as the rest of the cast, were quite happy.



A scene from Verdi's 'Attila' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Silvia Lelli. Click on the image for higher resolution

Muti gave, rightly, a dark tint from the introduction to the Prologue when he emphasized the cellos and the bassoons to show the desolation of Aquileia (the city port where most of the action develops) after the conquest and devastation by the Huns. Then, even though (as in many Verdi's early operas) the orchestra mainly supports the voices, he was able to provide links and tension between the many impressive individual moments, particularly in those grand ensemble movements that constantly inspired the composer to redefine and hone his dramatic language. Muti fully understands that Attila's real protagonist is neither the King of the Huns nor his treacherous Roman wife-of-one-night, Odabella, but the chorus, magnificently directed by his long time associate Roberto Gabbiani. To emphasize the darkness of the plot and of the music, Pier Luigi Pizzi provided a single set based on well-known Roman ruins (the Basilica of Maxentius) and black and white costumes.



Ildar Adbrazakov as Attila (left) and Nicola Alaimo as Ezio in Verdi's 'Attila' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Silvia Lelli. Click on the image for higher resolution

Attila is a 'voices' opera. Ildar Adbrazakov has the right physique du rôle and the right vocal color for the King of the Huns, and is quite effective in the bad dream scene with the impervious cabaletta Oltre Quel Limite as well in the final quartet, Tu Rea Donna, where he accuses Odabella of having planned to murder him. Odabella was the Russian dramatic coloratura soprano Tatiana Serjan, quite inspiring from her double aria Allor Che I Forti Corrono in the Prologue, and her duets with Foresto and Attila, to the climax at the end of the opera. Ezio, the devious Roman general and ambassador, was Nicola Alaimo; he has a grand aria (Tardo Per gli Anni And Tremulo with a well-known cabaletta Avrai Tu l'Universo, Resti l'Italia A Me) which he handled in a masterly fashion. The weak point was the tenor Giuseppe Gipali as Foresto. He had not impressed me in 2010 in the same part at the Sferisterio Festival, but 25 May was clearly a bad night; his alternate Jean-François Borras was sick. Good manners suggest that I shouldn't comment on the technical aspects of Gipali's singing, even though the excited audience gave him a fair share of applause.

Copyright © 1 June 2012 Giuseppe Pennisi,

Rome, Italy



GIUSEPPE VERDI

ATTILA

RICCARDO MUTI

TEATRO DELL'OPERA

FRANCESCO MARIA PIAVE

PIER LUIGI PIZZI

ITALY

GERMANY

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